Coming Home (143 page)

After a bit, she stood up and shed her clothes, and showered and dressed again in thin trousers and a sleeveless shirt. She put on some lipstick, and took up the bottle of L'Heure Bleu, and touched the stopper at the base of her neck and behind her ears. Then laid the bottle down, and picked up the yellow pages of the Australian girl's letter.

Jakarta,

September 19th, 1945.

Dear Judith,

My name is Ruth Mulaney. I am twenty-five years old. I am an Australian.

In 1941 I finished my nurses' training in Sydney and went to Singapore to stay with friends of my mother and father.

When the Japs invaded Malaya, my father cabled that I must get home, and I managed to get a passage on
The Rajah of Sarawak.
She was an old tub of a boat and overcrowded with refugees.

We were torpedoed six days out in the Java Sea at about five o'clock in the evening. Jess's mother had gone below for a moment, and asked me to keep an eye on Jess.

The ship sank very quickly. There was a lot of screaming and confusion. I grabbed Jess and a single life-jacket, and we jumped overboard. I was able to hang on to her, and then a lifeboat came and we managed to get into it. But we were the last, because it was already too full, and if others tried to board, we had to push them away, or hit them with oars.

There weren't enough boats or lifebelts or floats. We had no water nor emergency rations in the boat, but I had a water bottle and so did another woman. There were Chinese with us and Malays and a Lascar crewman. Four children and an elderly lady who were on board died on the first night.

We were adrift that night and the next day and another night. The next morning we were sighted by an Indonesian fishing boat and taken in tow. They took us to Java, to their village by the beach. I wanted to go to Jakarta to try to get another boat to take us to Australia, but Jess was ill.

She had cut her leg somehow, and it was septic and she ran a fever and was badly dehydrated.

The other survivors went on, but we stayed with the fishermen in their village. I thought Jess was going to die, but she's a strong little tyke and managed to pull through.

By the time she was fit to be moved, Japanese planes were appearing in the sky. Finally we got a ride in a bullock-cart on the road to Jakarta and walked the last fifteen miles. But the Japanese were already there, and they picked us up and put us in a camp at Bandung, with a lot of Dutch women and children.

Bandung was the first of four camps. The last, at Asulu, was the worst of all. It was a labour camp, and all of us women were made to work in the rice fields, or clean drains and latrines. Jess was young enough, so not made to work. We were always hungry and sometimes starving. One punishment was that everybody had no food for two days.

We ate rice and sago gruel and soup made of vegetable scraps. Sometimes the Indonesians threw a bit of fruit over the wire, or I was able to barter for an egg or a little salt. There were two other Australian women, nurses. One of them died, and the other was shot.

Jess was never really ill again, but suffered sores and boils which have left some scars.

We tried to have a little school for the children but then the guards took all our books away.

We knew that the war was ending because some brave women had smuggled in bits of a wireless and put it together and hidden it.

Then, around the end of August we were told that the Americans had bombed Japan and that the Allied Forces would be landing in Java. After that, the Commandant and the guards all disappeared, but we stayed in the camp because there wasn't anywhere else to go.

An American plane flew over and dropped crates with parachutes, with canned stuff and cigarettes. That was a good day.

Then the British came, and the Dutch husbands who had survived their camps came as well. I think they were pretty shocked when they saw the state we were in.

There are two reasons why it has taken so long for the word to get through to you that Jess is alive.

One is that trouble is brewing in Indonesia, because the Indonesians don't want the Dutch back as colonists. This has slowed everything up.

The other reason is that Jess was listed under my name, as Jess Mulaney, and we told everybody we were sisters. I did not want her to be separated from me. We did not even tell the Dutch women that we weren't sisters.

I was afraid of being repatriated before her and having to leave her behind, and so I didn't say anything until it was time for us to leave. Only then did the Army know that she was really Jess Dunbar.

Over these three and a half years Jess has witnessed some terrible events, atrocities and deaths. All of these she seems to have learned to accept, and to keep her head down. Kids seem to be able to detach themselves. She's a great little person and very courageous.

During this time together, we have become very close and important to each other. She flies tomorrow and is very miserable about saying goodbye. At the same time, she accepts that there is no way we can stay together any longer.

To make things easier, I've said it's not goodbye forever, and one day she must come to Australia and stay with me and my family. We're pretty straight-down-the-middle-type folk. My father is a building contractor, and we live in a small house in Turramurra, a suburb of Sydney.

But I'd be grateful if, when she is a bit older, you'd let her make the trip.

I go home soon after Jess just as soon as there is a passage on a boat, or a flight on a plane.

Take care of our little sister.

Regards,

Ruth Mulaney

She read the letter through twice, and then read it again, and folded it, and put it into the top drawer of her dressing-table.
Take care of our little sister.
For three and a half years, Ruth had been Jess's security, however tenuous. This was where her love and her loyalty lay. And she had had to say goodbye, and leave it all behind.

Now, it was dark. Judith got up and went out of her bedroom, and in search of Jess. She found her alone, on the lamp-lit veranda, turning the pages of one of Bob's massive old photograph albums. As Judith appeared, she glanced up. ‘Come and see these with me. They're so funny. Mummy and Dad. Ages ago. Looking so young.’

Judith settled herself beside Jess on the cushioned cane settee, and laid an arm around her shoulders.

‘Where's Uncle Bob?’

‘He's gone to change. He gave me this to look at. This is when they lived right here, in Colombo. And here's one of you in a terrible
hat.
’ She turned another page. ‘Who are these people?’

‘Those are our grandparents. Mummy's mother and father.’

‘They look like they're old.’

‘They were. And dreadfully dull. I used to hate going to stay with them. I don't think you liked it much either, even though you were just a baby. And this is Biddy, Uncle Bob's wife. Mummy's sister. You'll love her. She's funny, makes you laugh all the time.’

‘And this?’

‘That's Ned when he was about twelve. Their son. Our cousin. He was killed at the start of the war, when his ship was sunk.’ Jess said nothing. Simply turned another page.

Judith said, ‘I read the letter. Ruth sounds a special person.’

‘She is. And she was brave. Never frightened, not of anything.’

‘She says you were pretty brave too.’ Jess, elaborately, shrugged. ‘She said, in the camps, you were sisters.’

‘We pretended to be. At first. And then it was sort of real.’

‘It must have been rough, saying goodbye to her.’

‘Yeah.’

‘She says, when you're a bit older, she wants you to go to Australia and stay with her.’

‘We talked about that.’

‘I think it's a great idea.’

Jess's head shot up and, for the first time, she looked into Judith's face. ‘
Could
I? Could I go?’

‘Of course. Absolutely, of course. Say, when you're about seventeen? That's only three years away.’

‘Three
years
!’

‘You'll have to go to school, Jess. When we get back. You'll have a lot of catching up to do. But you wouldn't have to go away. You could go to St Ursula's, where I was. You could be a day-girl.’

But Jess was not interested in talking about school. ‘I thought you'd say I wouldn't be
able
to go.’ She was clearly determined to stick to the point. ‘I thought it would be too expensive. Australia's such a long way from England…’

‘It won't be too expensive, I promise. And maybe, when you come back from Australia, you could bring Ruth with you, and then she could stay with us.’

‘You mean it?’

‘I mean it.’

‘Oh. I'd like that better than
anything
in the world. If I could have just a single wish, that's what it would be. That was the worst about saying goodbye this morning. Thinking I'd never, ever see her again. Can I write to her and tell her? I know her address in Australia. I learned it by heart in case I lost the bit of paper.’

‘I think you should write a letter tomorrow. Not waste a moment. And then you can both start looking forward to it. It's important, always, to have something to look forward to. But…’ She hesitated, ‘Meantime, perhaps you and I should begin to make more immediate plans.’

Jess frowned, ‘Like what?’

‘I think it's time we went home.’